running with paper

Line feeds and insets and character ‘scaping …

But do you recall … a new character needed by all?

Dotty, the non-break full stop
Needed here and there so well
Inserted in domain names
So printed words do print so swell

Okay, I’ll stop torturing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. I’m probably the only one who can hear it in my head anyway.

But we do need a non-breaking period. Back in the day, we were taught to put two spaces after each period, each full stop. In writing numbers with decimal places, no spaces. Most magazines and newspapers had typesetters and copy editors to ensure that a period with no spaces around it, such as in a number (or in a web site address) didn’t get broken across the line.

But it’s happening. I’ve read half a dozen articles over the last few weeks, each touting recycling web sites, money strategy web sites, educational assistance web sites … and the paragraph broke at the “dot” in “dot com”.

So it’s time to introduce a new character – the non breaking period. I call it the dotty, but you can call it Unicode 2065 … that number’s available. The other option would be to surround the period mark in hyphenation points sent to negative three. That would tell the display and print code (if it can read hyphenation points) to *not* break up a URL.

… she so thoughtfully illustrates on the randomly
updated web site, runningwithpaper.
com. The scourge of the broken URL is a danger
to health, safety, and striped kittens.

becomes

… she so thoughtfully illustrates on the randomly
updated web site, runningwithpaper.com.
The scourge of the broken URL is a danger
to health, safety, and striped kittens.

I wrote this a few years ago for a friend asking about content management systems (CMS) and found it while helping another friend recently. For his needs I suggested http://www.joomla.org/ and http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ instead. For this repost, I’ve updated it slightly to reflect the experience I’ve gained in the interim and to address a more generic audience.

Subject: Some considerations for evaluating a CMS and your needs

Hey there, just to follow up our phone call …

We’ve been kicking around CMS talk too, here, and here’s a few thoughts that might be useful to keep in mind when you guys are figuring out what to get and what you need.

You already know what you have; from there figure out what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to have. Define your goals and needs. List them out, and rank them in order of importance to each group of users and customers you have – internal and external.

Generally your goals and needs might dovetail into a list that meets your current needs and expands your offerings, while leaving room for more growth later. Maybe you’re looking to both redesign the site and allow a greater range of people to add content. You want your team and contributors to have varying levels of responsibility for the management of that content – without opening the floodgates to everyone editing the site, and overwhelming those responsible for managing the content.
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A few years ago, I signed up with paperbackswap to trade around books I wasn’t using or were done with, to get more books. Like a used bookstore online.

I wasn’t a huge fan of it at the time; not a lot of users, books I didn’t care for (romances or obscure cooking books). But the service picked up, and I’ve expanded into reading more science fiction and picked Young Adult books back up again, and I’ve been trading, trading, trading.

One book I kick myself for giving up was my old Strunk and White book. Handy little book, but I was spoiled by daily access to an editor and coworkers who loved kicking around words and flinging the words about until they all finally fit right. Figured I wouldn’t need it for a while, and traded it away. And I found myself recently missing it so.

But my replacement is here … The Elements of Style, Illustrated. Updated, annotated, pretty little pictures as accompaniment (mostly relevant, but I’ve only had a quick glance). I’m happy to have a new (old) friend at my side again. First thing I turned to was the index; it told me that page 112 has covered the decade-old rule revision I’m still fighting, personally: prepositions placed in sentence at the end. Augh.

I admit that as I’ve transitioned from writing on a manual typewriter to composing on the computer screen, I’ve become a bit lazy in my spellcheckery. Those little red dots are my clean up crew; some days too much so. And inevitably, an error or two can slip in, sometimes making your point a bit more poignantly than you intended. Or just embarrasses the heck out of you.

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning on my inbox, and found a few gems that even the spell checker couldn’t save me from:

I’d suggest a tired approach to people management …

immediately followed by …

At the bottom of the pyramid are simple users.

Because pyramids are all about the tiers, don’t you know. Not! As the recipient later pointed out, though, sometimes tiered management is rather tired.

Other times, I get full of myself. On a short “white paper” on domesticity, I went way out there:

One could write books about [subject]

Editors are great for helping keep your ego in check. If only Clippy had been that useful.

Have you hugged your editor today?

But I do. I snagged a 3G iPhone when they became available, and installed the new and improved Facebook application as soon as it came online. It needs work (and its own post) but it’s better than nothing. I can check on friends and family with a few clicks, zip pictures out to folks, and kill a good five, ten, fifty minutes here and there.

For example, a friend posted that he was feeling “like peppy Beatles music” the other day. A few clicks later, I was connected to his voicemail, singing “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah,” in Peter Sellers’ style. A couple of days later he fired back with “A Hard Day’s Night” on my phone just as I walked out of a meeting. Being a new phone, he didn’t have my number programmed in, which made it funnier. He used his call log to song-back the ‘random stranger’ who had voicemailed him.

Ten minutes with the internet, and we can dig up the originals, or an exhausting list of Wilhelms and an examination of the originality of the Star Wars theme music. We’re getting to the point that everything is out there, and then someone unintentionally comes up with another internet phenomenon.

This time the honor goes to Microsoft’s SongSmith. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Ozzy Osbourne get his oom-pah-pah on, or pretend Paul and John suffered delusions of grandeur, everyone and anyone is having a grand old time.

Why words when pictures say it all?

Click for more movies as retro book covers …

I just paid some guys $24.95 to gain a way for me to email an old colleague. Not only that, I didn’t know for certain who I was emailing, but I had a suspicion, based on his profile, “private” or not. Colleague, if you’re reading this, it was worth every penny.

I’ve used LinkedIn for a while, mostly as a “by the way, look me up on LinkedIn” comment, punctuating meet and greet conversations, wrapping up lunches or other encounters. Now I’m hearing from a number of employment professionals that it is a major employment hub along with a companion site, indeed.com. With the spate of layoffs in my neck of the woods, my connection list has been growing. Former coworkers, longtime friends, even a few “imaginary” people whom I’ve never met in real life (but if I ever get to Europe, look out, Danu!).

Since LinkedIn is the place to be, I’ve been beefing up my profile. Adding positions, skills, friends. Making recommendations, and seeking a few of my own, hence the search for a former colleague. And I think I found him, but I ran into a couple of problems: first, his profile was private. Second, I was out of “InMail” credits. Being in a bit of a hurry, I decided to pay the $24.95 for some InMail credits, but one friend suggested I talk to a LION.

Apparently, there are minmaxers on LinkedIn. These LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) are linking to everyone as much as possible, as fast as possible, to gain “net cred” and power at LinkedIn. The idea is that I link up with one or two of them (there are a couple of recruiters that have snuck into my alumni circles, so it wouldn’t be that hard) and in a few days, ding ding ding, this “Private” profile is easier to connect to and email for free.

But I didn’t want to wait. I paid the money and composed my message blindly (InMail gives you a choice of addressing the note as Name, or Dear Name if you’re feeling formal, and Hi, Name if you’re on the casual side), using the pronoun of you, hoping I had the right guy but not typing in his name. Off the mail went, and now I had to wait for a reply and to find out who I’d emailed.

If I’d been a little more patient, I could have run two queries, one on the company name and one on my colleague’s name, caught the match, and used his name in the email. I could have been a bit more targeted, asking him directly for another letter of reference on LinkedIn to replace the paper one I’d been given about a decade ago. Serves me right for doing this at 11pm at night, rather than approaching the problem with rested brain.

However, it’s done. And it turns out that my sleuthing, my comparing the “name” search to the “company” search wasn’t necessary. The blind InMail has a bit of a flaw: once you’ve sent the mail, you can view the message, complete with formerly private name showing. So much for a “private” profile. But if you want privacy, you shouldn’t put anything on the internet in the first place.

While I’m fond of wiggling everything until it works, breaks, or improves, I didn’t in this case. But if I had the InMails to spare, I’d revoke the email (now that I have “Private’s” name) to see if I got my credit back. You can get a lot of mileage out of a couple of measly InMail credits if that is the flaw in the ointment. Meantime, I’ve got more LinkedIng to do, if I ever stop being annoyed with the mountains of JavaScript that muck up my browser so.

I admit this site is quite sparse. Words on a page, in a readable format, has been my ‘theme’ for a while. Partially because it’s easy, partially because I’m lazy. I’ve got a basic WordPress installation, it works, why much with it? I worry about content, not “font fondling” as a friend of mine and colleague tends to call it.

But part of me does like the “font fondling” aspect of this all as well. I planned for college with the intent of studying Marketing, Advertising, Communications. I didn’t quite get that far, but I’ve made a career out of communications in one form or another. So I might start moving things around here. Meantime, I’ll keep picking on everyone else researching changes and layouts that I like and don’t like from blogs, real life, and other media.

One recent site that changed her layout was the Silicone Valley Blogger at The Digerati Life (no, I’m not sure what a “Digerati” is, but I’m not above making words that suit my needs, either). She had some professionals come up with a few designs, and asked us to comment on the choices.

Though the logo she picked is perfectly functional (and it’s not my site!), I still prefer a mixture of two of the choices presented; a combo of the last two options presented. But as another reader pointed out, the profile image looks somber or mad to some folks. To me, she looked kind of shy and trying to be sexy (although some can’t help it, they are walking appeal). But unless the author is merely painting on an Asian persona, that is her in the … well … pixels. And maybe it’s a cultural difference that doesn’t have her posture and expression as somber or mad.

It’s hard to make something that appeals broadly and is memorable; it’s why designers and marketeers get paid the big bucks. But her experience in logo design also demonstrates that the ‘net has really changed how we do business in the last few years. She can dial up a professional, get and approve things quickly, and stay within a set budget – while looking quite slick in the result.

SVB: you go, girl!